GALBA, ServiusSulpicius (3 b.c.-69 a.d.), a Roman emperor. He came of a noble family, being sixth in direct descent from the great orator of the same name, though unconnected either by birth or adoption with the line of the first six Caesars. He owed his elevation to the growing power of the praetorians and the discontent of the provincials, weary of Nero’s rule, and beginning to assert their independence. As Tacitus justly remarks, the death of Nero divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. From the little we know of his earlier years he appears as a young man of remarkable gifts and even fascination—a strange contrast to his weak and unlovable old age. His biographer, Suetonius, relates that both Augustus and Tiberius prophesied to him his future rise. The story is improbable, though in part borne out by Tacitus, and rests on the authority of a credulous gossip, who inserts au omen or a prodigy at every turn of his hero’s fortunes'; but it helps to show, what we learn from other sources, that while still a youth he was regarded as one who was capable of great thiugs. He resisted the solicitations of the empress Agrippina, and refused the rich legacy of Livia Augusta. Rising through the various grades of office to the consulship iu 33 A.D., he acquired a high and well-merited reputation both as a general aud an administrator in the provinces of Gaul, of Africa, and of Spain, which he successively held. For the first half of Nero’s reign he lived in retirement, till, in 61, the emperor bestowed on him the province of Hispania Tarraconensis....
The first years of his rule were marked by rigorous discipline and strict justice, which sometimes degenerated into cruelty. We are told how he nailed the hand of a cheating money-changer to his bench, and how, when a guardian who had murdered his ward appealed to his Roman citizenship, he allowed him the honour of a higher gallows. It is true that during the later period of his administration he was indolent and apathetic, whether it was that he sought to elude the jealousy of Nero, or, as is more probable, felt the growing infirmities of age. Yet his career, taken as a whole, shows the justice of the common judgment, as reported by Tacitus, that all would have pronounced him fit for empire had he not been emperor indeed. In the spring of 68 Galba was holding an assembly at New Carthage when the news reached him of the insurrection in Gaul. The appeal of Vindex urging him to assume the championship of the oppressed human race placed Galba in an awkward dilemma, and his decision was prompted not so much by ambition as by fear of Nero, whom he knew to be plotting his death. The fall and suicide of Vindex renewed his hesitation, when the news that Nymphidius Sabinus, the prefect of the praetorians,-had declared in his favour, and by large promises in his name carried the troops with him, revived his spirits. Before, he had only dared to call himself the minister of the senate and Roman people; he now assumed the title of Caesar, and marched straight for Rome.
At first he was welcomed by the senate and the party of order, but he was never popular with the soldiers or the people, and he soon forfeited the regard even of his few supporters. He was ruined by his virtues no less than by his vices. To the praetorians who claimed their promised largess he replied that he chose his soldiers aud would not buy them. The mob was disgusted at the moroseness and niggardliness of a prince who hated all display, and rewarded a popular singer with a paltry present of five denarii. But the respectable classes had graver causes of discontent. They soon found that the government was wholly in the hands of three favourites—two of them officers, and one a freedman who had followed Galba from Spain. Thus the worst abuses of the last reign were revived, without any of its brilliance and gaiety.
Galba was first made aware of the general discontent by an outbreak among the legions of Germany. He sought to avert the rising storm by an act which, if better timed and performed in a more popular way, might have saved him. He adopted as his coadjutor and successor Piso Frugi Licinianus, a man in every way worthy of the honour. The speech in which he announced to Piso his election has a genuine ring, and convinces us that his choice was wise and patriotic; but by the populace it was attributed solely to fear, and the praetoriaus were indignant at it because unaccompanied with the usual donative. When the elements of a revolution are all in train a leader is not far to seek. Salvius Otho, a disappointed candidate for the office of Piso, eutered into communication with the discontented praetorians, and was by them adopted as their emperor. Two soldiers from the ranks undertook to transfer the empire of Rome, and actually transferred it. Galba, on his way to meet the rebels, was met by a troop of cavalry and butchered near the Lacus Curtius. A common slave severed the bald head from the body, and thrusting it inside his toga presented the bloody offering to Otho. Thus perished, unwept and unpitied, a man who, had he died a proconsul instead of an emperor, would have left as fair a fame as any Roman of the first century.
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